


The Gardener’s Lover

by jailor



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Canonical Character Death, Comedy, Death, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/F, Ghost Stories, Grief/Mourning, Tragedy/Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27404806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jailor/pseuds/jailor
Summary: To Pearl’s surprise, she heard Rose’s voice in the spring.
Relationships: Pearl/Rose Quartz (Steven Universe)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

For the length of one lifetime, Pearl and Rose lived together in earshot of the sea. They built a home on a sand-covered cliff stained violet by wild lupine, waist-high.

The house was built with love. The pair had access to an overflowing spring of it between them. Pearl pulled streams from Rose with a look. Her mundane boldness set the stars in place. Their foundation cured. Rose’s collected in the heel of each hand whenever she knelt to knead at Pearl’s shoulders. Walls erected themselves in their voices.

They started a family together. This family of theirs was always growing bigger and always growing smaller. Everyone was welcome, so everyone eventually grew up. They grew until the home in earshot of the sea could no longer hold them and went the way of hermit crabs to find another.

Pearl and Rose did not have to worry about this. The home in earshot of the sea was their home. They’d already shed former shells. When Pearl and Rose were young, they lived beneath the ocean in a place appropriately called SeaWorld. In SeaWorld, there was no social mobility, because the designers of SeaWorld engineered it that way. People like Pearl and Rose were born into whatever they did. Rose was a reef designer, and was responsible for all the life in the world. She was uniquely trained and qualified via a series of multiple-choice tests. Pearl’s job was to stand in one place. She held a clicker in one hand, which she clicked whenever a visitor entered SeaWorld. SeaWorld was a closed society, so no one ever visited. From her perspective, Pearl literally had the most boring job in the world.

This situation was obviously stupid and untenable in the long run. Rose started talking to Pearl whenever she came down to check pH levels. They checked one another’s pH, in a manner of speaking. They talked about building a home in earshot of the sea. They quit SeaWorld and went on land. They spoke to other people of all sorts, and discovered that just about everybody’s assigned jobs were just as poorly planned as Pearl and Rose’s. They and their allies formed a cooperative economic coalition in order to leverage collective power against the losers in charge. They were targeted by the government. They went into hiding and started a family. Eventually, they had a son with Rose’s human lover, from whom they kept the secret of SeaWorld.

That story has been told before, so let’s move on. You get the idea.

For the length of one lifetime, Pearl and Rose lived together in a home in earshot of the sea. At the end of this lifetime, Rose left Pearl behind in the fall.

Pearl buried her in a flowerbed, per Rose’s wishes. She retreated into their home and shut the doors and windows to all seasound. Winter came, and knocked, and went. The garden fell asleep. 

She opened her doors in the spring. Attempted to open. First the knob itself fought her, so Pearl planted her foot on the welcome runner, shoved one shoulder against the door, and twisted it up with her whole body. The runner ran away from her, bunching like ribbon candy against Pearl’s dusty shoe rack. (Rose had rarely worn shoes.)

Pearl fell to the floor, bruising her nose. The thing remained shut. All the windows of the house were closed, too. Pearl pulled up a blind and saw nothing. Pearl cursed the doors and windows. She tried again. Her bare feet squeaked without the runner. So did the wood when she managed to budge it. The knob creaked nine degrees, spinning shank and latch, and Pearl saw a seam of darkness appear along the edge of the door. She released her doorknob, leaving fingerprints on the rose. She shoved.

It groaned at her. It opened. Pearl saw sunlight and thorn at her window back to the outer world. Rose’s garden had grown wild without anyone to tend it. While Pearl had been fast asleep in her grief, it had overtaken their home.

The garden had always been Rose’s. Rose had always been Pearl’s. This probably made the garden Pearl’s responsibility, now, but Pearl didn’t want anything to do with it. She had only just started thinking again, and Rose’s grave lay in the garden. Pearl was not ready to enter. She only wanted to leave the house.

The door didn’t open any further, whether Pearl asked nicely or not, and weeds had grown too thickly over the windows to escape another way. Pearl resorted to a blade and forced her way out the front.

Pearl walked to town for the first time since Rose left her. The lupine had sown itself another rung while she was sleeping. The tree with two trunks had taken lightning; one side of it was a wound. A horse fly bit her leg. Pearl had been frozen in time long enough to have forgotten the real world, and all of it irritated her now. Her eyes were oversensitive to the sunlight, rendering columns of pollen blind spots. Her feet were unfamiliar with the uneven earth, the little stones that settled in her shoe.

One journey there and back and Pearl was really quite sick of it all. She entertained the thought of another nap. Visitors always came by in the spring and summer, and this year there was no Rose. It wouldn’t do for Pearl to oversleep.

Pearl didn’t need to eat, but her son did, and he would be visiting not long from now. She decided to clean up, cook, and present her best self to her family.

The garden was as high as the house. Pearl cleared back her narrow path and kept both eyes on the door. There Pearl’s pruning shears freed it from the ropes of thorn that had sprung up in Pearl’s absence.

She went inside. She shut the door. 

Pearl slept an ordinary sleep that night, for her, meaning she didn’t sleep at all. She had a couch the color of red sand. It had once been the perfect size for Pearl and Rose together. Pearl took it with a cup of tea, small. She looked out the window. The window was still covered in garden. She could not tell what time it was by looking. She looked at their things. Pearl hadn’t touched them since Rose left. The bookcase was out of order. She could clean that tomorrow, when she cleaned the house.

Because she was now awake, Pearl heard something. Not the sound of the sea; that was muffled by the plants. A scrap-tap-tap on the window.

She was still angry at the universe for interrupting her thoughts earlier. The fly-bite on her leg was a hard, itchy welt. The sound on the window was her enemy.

Pearl forced the window out in much the same way she had the door, hacking open a viewport with a kitchen knife. The tapping stopped.

It was night-time now. The lupine-field had gone red. There were stars in the sky.

“Be quiet!” She shouted out the window. Cool evening air responded. Pearl shivered and shut it. She could still see the lupines.

The tapping resumed.

Pearl threw open the portal again and confronted her enemy. “I said, be quiet!” she screamed to the natural world.

The tapper tapped. Pearl heard a voice. It said her name. 

It was Rose’s voice.

”Pearl,” said Rose’s voice. It was a whisper. It was the voice Rose used in the universe they shared between the two of them, in bed before day and just after dreams. “Let me in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “In the ocean one fish  
> swallows the other:  
> a geometric progression of  
> loss.  
> You are bigger than I.  
> The calamity of love  
> swelling out larger than us.”
> 
> from “Woman Watches Ocean on a Reef through a Glass-Bottomed Boat” by Angela Jackson


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She’s gone,” Pearl said. “Go away.”

“She’s gone,” Pearl said. It fell down her throat and lingered. “Go away.”

”Pearl, let me in,” Rose’s voice said. Pearl shut the window and went to bed. Thorns scratched her roof. It was enough like rain to put her back to sleep.

She woke nine weeks later to a knock on her door. It was her son. He’d torn a tunnel through the weeds.

”Steven,” Pearl said. “How you’ve changed!”

He had. They embraced.

”Pearl,” Steven said. “What’s up with Mom’s garden?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Pearl said. “Come on in, I’ll make breakfast.”

”It’s overgrown the beach house,” he said. Everyone had their own name for the home in earshot of the sea. “Need a hand with it?”

“I overslept,” Pearl said.

”I didn’t know you sleep,” said Steven. “Are you okay, living here? It hasn’t been so long since–”

”I’m all right,” Pearl said. “Trust me.” So he did.

Pearl spent the better part of the week dragging shrubs off the garden by their roots, however Rose’s ghost might protest. Her gloves picked up sapstains. She freed the walls from their cursed rosebushes and let in air, sun, and rain once more. Ladybugs littered the window frames. Half of the garden was totally clear.

”Won’t you let them stay?” Rose murmured into Pearl’s ear.

”No,” Pearl said. She wrenched at a sunny dandelion with her fork. “Pests.”

”They’re cute. Little clouds. Dust bunnies. Lions.”

”You can weed them out yourself, then.”

“Oh, no,” laughed Rose. “I’ll watch them grow and grow.”

Pearl spared the life of a single weed for her sake. She said to the weed, “You always were more merciful than I.”

”Look at you, talking to yourself.” Amethyst had let herself into the yard.

”Amethyst,” Pearl said. They embraced. “How’s baseball?”

”Math,” Amethyst said. “How’s gardening?”

”Splendid,” said Pearl.

”Half your yard is a hedge.”

”I overslept,” Pearl said.

Amethyst gave her a hug. “Need a hand?”

”I’m all right,” Pearl said.

They shared an evening meal of Amethyst’s design and bid one another good night.

”Good bye,” said Pearl.

”Peace,” said Amethyst.

”Bye, Amethyst,” said Rose. Pearl turned around.

”Did you hear her?” Pearl said.

”What?” Amethyst said.

”Nothing,” said Pearl.

”Okay, bye.”

Greg and Steven visited in the high heat of summer. Pearl was three-quarters of the way through the yard. The overgrowth leapt at any lapse of vigilance. It encroached on her hard-won open space. Pearl retread the same beds twice. The loam might bear onions next year. Rose’s ghost kept her company.

Pearl ran out of yard to clear and time in the season. She reached the rosebush beneath which Rose now resided, or what was left of her, or what was left behind. Pearl injured herself on her analysis. She could not shut it off. Pruning the bush was like tugging at scabs. The horse-fly-bite healed over.

She cleaned up the grave. The flowers bloomed and died. They shriveled in the late summer sun. They turned brown and fell for autumn’s welcome. The sea air kept Pearl’s clifftop cool. She imagined the garden next year. Back to life.

”It’s beautiful,” Rose said.

A cormorant dove from a stone.

”It’s beautiful,” Pearl said. “I miss you.”

She was gone.

Pearl didn’t hear her voice again. The length of her days grew shorter. The color of the sun changed. Pearl remained inside.

Her weeds returned. They tapped on her walls. Pearl threw open the window.

No sound of Rose.

”She’s gone,” Pearl said. It tore her in two. “She’s gone!”

She curled around herself in protection. She slept through the winter.

Pearl woke up in the spring to Garnet and Greg, shoveling shrubs from her door.

The vines returned. Pearl woke with one in her lap. She’d slept without shutting the windows, and her problem was back twice as strong. There were flowers in the kitchen sink, leaves filling the bathtub, and a knotted nest of woody vines about her feet.

Greg and Garnet helped her empty the floor. They prioritized the clearing of the house.

”Some garden you two have here,” Greg said.

”Had. It was Rose’s,” Pearl said. 

“It won’t leave you alone,” said Garnet.

”I overslept,” said Pearl.

They left her soon enough. Pearl took her dandelion tea on the cliff. The cormorant had a new family.

”It’s beautiful,” said Rose’s voice. She’d been gone all winter. Not a word.

Pearl threw her mug to the ground. It harmonized. “She’s gone!” Pearl said. “Go away!”

”I’m sorry,” said Rose’s voice.

”I must be cursed,” said Pearl. “The question is how to lift it.”

Before they’d settled down in the home in earshot of the sea, Rose and Pearl used to sit together on the pier back home. Rose was just tall enough to reach the water with her legs at high tide. If they sat there talking long enough, her socks soaked through. (Rose rarely wore shoes.)

”Pearl.” It hurt to hear. “I’m not real.”

”No, you’re not,” said Pearl. “You’re gone.”

”You forget.”

”I remember,” Pearl said. “I know.“

”I’d leave you alone if I could.”

”I know you would,” said Pearl.

She cleaned out the garden again. Her family continued to visit. Pearl spoke to Rose. 

Rose left in the winter. It happened one day in the middle of lunch. Pearl went to bed for a year.

She woke to the sound of Rose’s voice outside her open window. ”Icicles!” They dangled from the frame. It was February. Pearl sat up in her bed. Her duvet was a carpet of ivy.

“Not again,” Pearl said. “That’s what she always said.”

”That’s why, I think,” said Rose.

Pearl once again reclaimed her miserable home. She had the front presentable for Amethyst, who was impressed by her progress.

”Yes, time goes on,” Pearl said.

Amethyst stayed over for some time. Rose’s voice abandoned her early. Amethyst and Pearl completed a puzzle, twenty thousand pieces.

Amethyst left for a job. Pearl organized the bookshelf by hue. She went to sleep. Her garden grew over the windows.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pearl met Peridot at the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This little story kept growing like the plants so there’s now one more chapter to go. Thank you for reading.

Pearl met PERIDOT at the library counter. (The letters were printed on a flat metal plate which was fixed to a lenticular wooden block on top of the desk. She did not introduce herself to Pearl.)

“You know Rose?” Peridot said. She stamped the first book in Pearl’s stack.

”What makes you say that?”

Peridot fanned out her lending cards. The first line was William Buford Buchanan’s, the summer of 1862. A historical procession of obliques and numerals followed. It ended with Rose, years before she left, her name in careless script. Today’s date awaited Pearl on the next row. She touched the tail of the Q.

”She borrowed all the gardening tomes, too,” said Peridot.

”Of course,” said Pearl. “Yes, I know Rose.” Past tense? Present?

”Sign here,” Peridot said. She jabbed the blank space. She shouted into Pearl’s ear. “Tell her I said hi! It’s been ages! Don’t be a stranger!”

Pearl signed. “I will,” she said. “Thank you.”

Pearl met Lion in the garden in the middle of the night.

She was growing vegetables. The garden would have a use again, at least. She took off her shirt and turned over the soil. Rose’s old friends started sprouting. The sun helped hurry things along.

Their neighbors from the woods returned to make Pearl’s life difficult. Her toe kissed wet rabbit droppings in the misty dawn. The neighbors moved in. Pearl researched her plight in the library books. Pearl took precautions. Pearl’s shoots sprouted chew-marks overnight. They jabbed at her daily like the thorns.

A bold rat was hollowing out gourds. Pearl was determined to shoot it out of her home, or at least to scare it. Amethyst’s friend had lent Pearl a loud weapon.

Pearl heard them scatter when she splashed through the leaves. She took up guard in the garden.

The rats remained at a stalemate with her. They gathered in the cover of the lupine field, peeking out at Pearl, who held Vidalia’s unloaded gun. Rose’s flowerbed lay dense at her back.

The nemeses grew used to one another. A rat ran over Pearl’s foot. She brandished the gun. 

”Our little neighbor,” Rose said. “How bold.”

”They’re stealing your squash,” said Pearl.

”So sweet. Let them keep it.”

The war of the garden persisted. Pearl planted thick bands of peppermint. She hung scarecrows. She left rotten things in the mulch. The rabbits and rats allied against her. They feasted on her efforts. Rose’s thorns snuck through the front door. Pearl’s watch began at dusk. She was outnumbered.

She waited in the garden in the middle of the night.

“I’ve had enough of this,” she said. The gun leaned on the wall of the house. “I’m going to bed.”

Rose said nothing. Gone again.

The bold neighbor walked into the open. It took hold of the tomato trellis.

A piece of moonlight knocked it away! A bright little thing!

It was a cat. That was Lion. He arrived uninvited.

Pearl thought, if Rose were here, she’d say, “Thank you!”

He sought her approval. Lion pushed his nose on Pearl’s hand.

”You didn’t catch it, you know,” she said. “What do you have to be proud of?” It was still the middle of the night. Lion purred and purred.

Pearl met Kofi and Kiki Pizza at the farmers’ market.

They talked sourcing tomatoes. As well as fish. And political strategy. Kofi assessed Pearl’s SeaWorld expertise. Beach City’s local businesses had ambitions not unlike those of the Crystal Gems. (So, Beach City was the town’s name.) 

They were working their way around a heavily binding TV contract that would bankrupt the local economy. The boardwalk intended to pull out and go independent. It was no easy feat to transition from a reliance on tourism, or dotgov-conglomerate funding. Survival structures to outlast this took first priority: feeding one’s family and neighbors, when it came to restaurant owners. Their ultimate goal was to heal the town of corruption and teach out its tactics, every person a peer. Just like Ocean Town before them.

“That’s why my mother ran for mayor,” Kofi said. “She works with people like your friends.”

“That’s awful,” said Pearl. “I had no idea.”

“And she’s right,” Kofi said. “It’s not ethical.”

“I’ll say,” said Pearl. She didn’t own a television. “Of course you can use the garden. Rose would stand for nothing less. I’ll have to clean it up a bit.”

“Let’s talk,” Kofi said.

“Rose’s speeches are on Youtube,” Kiki said. “Good material.”

“You remind me of when I was younger,” said Pearl.

“Time to go. I’ll put you in touch with Steve Fryman,” said Kofi.

They exchanged emails. Pearl volunteered to write Bismuth a letter. She rarely heard from Bismuth since the war.

Pearl got home to find the garden overgrown again. Flowers on her pillow.

Not again! She couldn’t sleep. Not that she had to. Pearl skipped bedtime for a week and tore it all out again. She increased in efficiency. It was late enough in the year that the organic things in her path were long dead and dry.

Pearl was awake for the first snow. Lion watched it with her. She lit a candle Steven had made them out of wax. It was the shape of the negative space in his nine-year-old fist. Her fourth puzzle came together.

She dozed off. She woke in a snowdrift. The wind had blown her home open. She shoveled it free. Kiki Pizza and her sister Jenny appeared at Pearl’s door with a plastic container.

“Hi, Pearl,” Kiki said.

“Hey, Pearl,” Jenny said. “You all right?”

“I overslept,” Pearl said. “How nice to see you two.”

“Nice to see you too,” said Jenny. “It’s been a while since I caught you at a show. You should come see my band.”

“I’ve been gardening,” Pearl said. “I should. I will soon.”

”Aw, gardening? Sounds fun!”

Jenny shared with her a wikihow article about how to dry the couch.

“I’ll text it to you,” Kiki said. Pearl didn’t own a phone.

Jenny said, “That’s okay, Pearl, I’ll send it to your email.”

Lion helped her air the house out. Pearl opened the gift from the neighbors. It was a crock of fish pizza stew. She had half a winter to go. Rose’s ghost wasn’t whispering.

She thought about sleeping it off. No luck; she was too wet and cold from the snowstorm. Pearl warmed up with Lion and the stew. Lion lapped at her bowl. He groomed his fur in gravy.

In springtime the bush burst alive again. Pearl managed to keep it at bay for a month. She went out with the shears every morning and interrupted its crawl to the house. She kept her bedroom windows shut.

Kofi stopped by to talk business. Greg and Steven were due in a week. Garnet planned to visit in August, and stay for another, if the future played out that way.

Pearl woke with a mouthful of rose petals. She hanahaki-hacked her way to the surface. The bush had climbed into her bedroom overnight. She scratched herself in three dimensions climbing out of it. Her skin stung all over. 

She broke out. She fell into the bathroom. The toilet lid bowed with her weight. Thornshadows crawled down her wall like searching fingers.

“Pearl,” Rose whispered. Enchantment on her lips. Like her kiss on the surgery table. Or maybe the lab table. The kitchen table. The table in Greg’s trailer. It was a table whisper. Anywhere. 

Pearl trembled. 

“Let me in.”

“Rose,” Pearl said. “Why can’t I move on?”

She walked out the front door. Her shoe filled with pebbles. She walked to the library. She kept herself up reading curse books.

Peridot enabled it. Different interests, same overnights. 

They fell asleep in the library. They woke up with it covered in thorns.

While Pearl had been hiding in the library Rose’s grave had crawled over the home in earshot of the sea, choked out its violet skirt of lupines and overtaken the town. 

“Maybe you _are_ cursed,” said Peridot. “Hold on, I’ll call somebody who can help.”

She left Pearl alone to deal with the plants. 

Pearl used the sharpest thing she could find in the library: the metal lip of the doorframe’s foot. 

She tore it out rather than unscrew it. It felt like saving time. The rosebush raised wooden spears in opposition.

“What about our industrial-sized paper cutter?” said Peridot. She was hanging up her phone.

“Do you know the last time it was sharpened?” said Pearl. She was dueling a living rosebush.

“I see your point,” said Peridot.

Pearl pointed. “Over there!”

Peridot dodged a woody encroach. The town united against the killer rosebush invasion, which we won’t pay any more attention to. Pearl fought her way past the canes. She waded through conical flowers.

Pearl attended the flowerbed beneath which Rose lay.

She said, “What am I doing wrong?”

“Nothing,” Rose said. At the sound of her voice, the rosebush stopped moving. Pearl fell to her knees on the grave.

Pearl groaned into dirt. She closed her eyes. “Rose.”

”Pearl,” Rose said softly. “My Pearl.”

Rain fell. The living rosebush crumbled and was dragged away. Her overgrown garden was still. Pearl’s chin sank into mud. The anchor roots embraced her. Pearl slept.

Greg and Steven woke her up. Garnet and Amethyst were not far behind. They peeled the thorny branches from her body. She was half-buried in wet dirt.

Pearl sat up.

“You’ll catch a chill out here,” Greg said. His eyes were dark bags. He was frowning and smiling. Such concern. Rose had been the same way.

She looked to Amethyst, who had a hand on Pearl’s head. 

“Something you wanna get off your chest?” Amethyst said.

“It’s Rose,” Pearl said. Her voice was not strong.

Garnet touched her head too. She brushed back Pearl’s hair. “Let’s talk.”

Pearl’s son held her hand and she squeezed it. He didn’t say a word. He’d seen this side of Pearl before.

They pried the last of Pearl away from Rose’s drying grave. The branches were brittle husks. Snow fell. The family went inside. Lion joined them for tea.

Rose didn’t return. Her plants didn’t grow.

Garnet slept over for the winter. They sat on the couch the color of red sand and reminisced. They talked about times to come.

Pearl’s windows were bare. She went to the garden to look. Rose’s grave had kept a salt crust of their tears. The light leaving it stung.

Nothing grew in that flowerbed that year. Its skeleton sat like an empty cage in the garden. Pearl had a good day. She changed her sheets. The lint-catch turned pink. She tidied the yard. 

Pearl scraped up the salt with her gloves. She swept it away with the sand. She tracked dirt back into the home. Lion ate an insect by the door. It cracked in his mouth.

She tended the rest of the garden. The tomatoes fruited round and red. Pearl baked the Pizzas a pie.

She delivered one to Peridot too.

“Pie?”

“I like pie,” Pearl said. “It’s a symbol of gratitude.”

“I don’t ‘eat’,” Peridot said.

“Then give it to the witch,” said Pearl.

“We don’t live together any more.”

Pearl patted the tinfoil on top. “With my regards.”

“Wow, thanks,” said Peridot. “What a gift.”

Pearl pruned her tomatoes. The vines left her alone. 

Bismuth visited in the summer at last. Pearl’s home was presentable.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pearl overslept.

Year after year a dead flowerbed. It appeared that their salt cut her curse.

Bismuth moved up for work. She lived in a town to the west. The neighborhood there was daily designing their own way of working. Bismuth lived it at scale. She helped Pearl measure out her raised flowerbeds. She held both Pearl and Lion with care. She offered Pearl a shoulder to cry on. Pearl wrapped both arms around Bismuth’s. She wouldn’t hear of it. For now, joy alone.

Lion moonlighted in the garden. He danced through the lupine. Pearl’s onions stood up from their sleep. 

Pearl imagined Rose’s voice speaking to her. Imagination only. It wasn’t the same. She’d grown emptier basking in fullness.

She became angry at the dead plot. She returned to the library to borrow a better book.

“I’M SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS,” said Peridot when Pearl descended from the trees to return Manutius’s _Suda_ , spilling stones. “I had no clue!”

“You didn’t know,” Pearl reiterated for her. She stopped short of ‘you’d no way of knowing’. 

They sliced apart Pearl’s other lends, talking small. Peridot had some interest in growing. “I majored in agricultural technology for two years,” she said. “But the real money’s in library sciences.”

(Canned audience laughter.)

Pearl mentioned the thing the Pizzas and Frymans were starting. 

“Shut up and keep your voice down,” said Peridot.

She rang out Suitcase Sam for videos game. She covered the FISHY aquarium poster on the wall with another. YOU OTTER BE READING, it said. A cartoon of an otter, bashing its books with a rock.

Suitcase Sam waved good-bye through the door.

Peridot said when he left, “I had a FEELING the boardies were up to something. I’m in. This is the chance I’ve been WAITING for ever since Rose radicalized me (in theory.)”

“Rose????” Pearl said. Four question marks. A bit much.

“Yes, Rose,” Peridot said. “Your mate. She used to come by and read science books.”

“‘Science’,” said Pearl, who was in bed with a number of sciences.

“Just like Steven. He showed me the magic bus book about the water cycle once. Revolutionary.”

“You said you studied agritech?” Pearl said.

”Wasn’t Rose the mastermind of the SeaWorld rebellion?”

“She was beautiful, and a genius,” Pearl said, lost in time. “She invented something new. But the mastermind, if anyone, was me. Ha ha. Funny those who write history choose not to attribute it honestly.”

Peridot rolled her eyes. But she said, “Yeah, Rose talked to everybody in town. Not about that only, about anything. She liked making small talk. Asked stupid questions. Got stupid answers. She called my wood ants ‘effervescent’.”

Pearl sighed longingly into her palm. She wilted against the library counter. “Yes, that sounds just like Rose.”

“She was obnoxious. We love that stuff here. And each other! You need people like that for imagining. Back to the matter at hand – the Beach City/Little Homeworld project.”

“You need everyone,” Pearl said, and then, “What?? When??” Four interrogation points, but in half. She’d been asleep in her cabin too long.

“It’s an all the time forever thing. That’s just change. Don’t you have to go home now?” Peridot said. “Before your curse comes knocking? Bismuth only just fixed the door. She had to replace the whole frame.”

“I think it’s dead,” said Pearl. The d-word caught on her jaw. “You’re right, it is getting late. Night, Peridot. I’ll be in touch.”

Peridot asked for her number.

Pearl said, “I ought to get a phone.”

The woman who sold her one had pink hair. They met by the wrestling stadium.

“Thank you,” said Pearl, handing off cash. The mystery girl took it and counted. She showed Pearl how the thing turned on and off.

“You’ll need a SIM,” she said.

“I’ve got one.” It contained one thousand minutes and one hundred units of short message service. Pearl had read about this part in the book. “I came prepared, you know.”

“Sure. Any numbers you want? I’ll type faster.”

“No,” said Pearl. 

Mystery girl winked. “Got you.” She put her own in. For Pearl. “There, first one.”

“This can’t be ethical,” Pearl said. “It used to be yours.” She feasted her eyes on the phone. 

Mystery Girl’s name was S. Pearl selected the SMS option.

_Hello, “S“!_ message one said.

_Thank you for selling me your used telephone._ Message two. Ninety-eight to go. Pearl’s possibilities were limitless.

“Use the Enter key for line breaks. You’ll save more of your minutes that way.”

“This is an SMS,” Pearl said. She had the vocabulary down pat. “Shall I save _your_ minutes, too?”

“Got a problem with time?” said S. 

“Call me. We’ll talk about it,” said Pearl.

S saw her off across the warehouse lot. She was smiling. 

At home Pearl kept up with her charges. Lion chased beetles underfoot. 

At nightfall she lingered before retirement. The garden was a dim, snoozing rainbow. The air smelled of salt and blooming decay. 

“Pearl,” said Rose’s voice at the door. Pearl shut it.

She slept over at Bismuth’s the next, and startled up at sunrise, but the other town’s cliff remained bare and branchless. When Pearl traveled home through Beach City the library was not covered in bushes. No living plants attacked. She slept over. She woke Bismuth with her anxiousness. Bismuth stroked circles on Pearl’s thigh, hardly pressing. They fell back asleep.

Pearl signed the contract with Kofi’s mother and planned for her Fryman potatoes. She enlisted Peridot’s part-time assistance. Pearl’s garden grew greater. They split their time between it and the library.

Peridot came to the family reunion. She brought pumpkin pie of her own.

“I’ll plan a funeral,” Pearl said over dinner. Amethyst spittook her soup.

“Who’s dying?” asked Bismuth.

“For Rose,” Pearl said. “Whatever you’d like to call it. A ritual of good-bye. We never did have one.”

“We planted that rose bush,” said Greg.

“My point exactly. You and I weren’t speaking, then.”

“And you two have come so far!” Steven beamed. “Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom.” He left to collect himself. 

Pearl experienced the emotion of guilt for not giving warning.

”Let’s do it,” said Garnet. Ever leading. 

Pearl’s family saw her off with great love. She tidied the house of their wake. Lion got in the way. They fell asleep on the couch the color of red sand together.

Pearl woke in the rosebush. Elbows and knees at her ears. She was spiraled up in on at the bones of her body, and the gravecanes held tight like a snare. All she could see were red thorns.

“Rose,” Pearl said. Her throat was dry. The sound scraped. “Let me out.”

Rose didn’t answer. Pearl tried to push herself open. The wood strained and set. There was a breeze in the garden. Pearl smelled parsnip.

”Let me out, Rose,” Pearl said. “There’s zucchini to pick.”

The rose bush responded to nothing. Pearl felt the sun pass overhead. She listened to the sound of bees drinking. She felt her ass sink underground.

”Enough of this,” Pearl said in the shiver of evening. “I won’t be pushed around by a shrub.”

She pushed but the shrub did not answer.

Lion found her in the middle of the night. His tiny hand joined the branches to torment Pearl’s side.

”Lion,” she said. “Go away.”

Another day passed without movement. The rosebush was starting to bud. Pearl did not need to eat or sleep, but there’s no thinking being takes well to a box.

“Rose,” Pearl said. “I’m so angry with you.”

Thorns pricked the tears from her face.

Six or seven days into it, Pearl found her coop a bit wider, if only through fractional forcing. Progress was progress, and Lion was back.

”Leave, Lion,” Pearl said when Lion’s beans found the bridge of her nose through the thorns. He knocked petals down the front of Pearl’s camisole. “You’re useless at this. At least you could bring over the shears.”

”The shears!” said Rose. “Of course, shears! I’ll be right back.” Lion’s arm withdrew.

”Rose?” Pearl croaked. “Don’t you dare go. I have words for you.” She’d been saving them up all week.

Rose had gone. As fickle in death as in life. Deprived of audience, Pearl’s ghost whispers were ignored. She had them out all the same. They’d been pressure-cooking; days and years of nbd-indignations balled up in a knot atop the vault of a universe. Pearl cursed her lost love with a mouthful of thorns, and all of the world’s little wonders she’d worshipped. Pearl really laid into the dirt. The unlucky ant trail that went by her heel had a front-row, red-carpet exclusive.

Pearl had her words with the cat upon his return, chewing plastic.

”What is that, Lion?” Pearl said. She could not see him from inside the bush. She could not remove the object from Lion’s mouth. “What are you chewing, you little twerp?”

The bush shook around her. Roses rained down the back of her neck and Pearl thought, _He’s retaliating?_

“Pearl?” It was Steven’s voice. “Pearl, are you in there?”

”Steven!” Pearl said. She went off like a gull. “Steven, pull the bush up with the incredible strength you inherited from your mother! Destroy the damn thing!”

”No need for that,” Greg’s voice said. “I brought clippers.”

They cut her out of the bush. Pearl shook her arms and legs awake, raining soil. 

“How many times do you plan to do this?” Greg asked her. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Steven, although it was not.

Pearl thanked them.

Greg borrowed her bathroom before hitting the road. He lingered.

“How’s the garden?” He said. “Aside from trying to eat you.”

She told him about signing over the land to the community trust. Pearl described the Fryman boys learning to till.

”That’s great! Sounds right up your alley, Pearl. You, uh,” he said, splashing around in her sink. Greg shut off the faucet. “You still thinking about doing some kind of - memorial thing?”

Pearl watched him defile her hand towel. “I am. Next year...?” She transmuted it into a question. Greg ought to have a say in this too. She swallowed the notion of sharing.

Greg’s face creased at the edges and eased. He’d changed since Pearl saw him last summer. There was something Roseish in his eyes. She thought, had they met, they might have made good friends, if not for. If not.

”I’ve been thinking we needed,” he said, “to do something like that.” 

”Yes,” Pearl said. “I have too. That’s why I suggested it.”

Greg patted her on the back. A slap of one meaty organic paw, just like Rose’s bowling. It knocked her out of place. Pearl’s antecubital fossa caught on the towel rack’s head.

”My fossa,” she said, wincing. She eyed it for the bruise.

”So, next year?” Greg said.

”Next year, then. Let’s do it.” 

“Thanks, Pearl,” said Greg.

She could say the same to him, but Pearl wouldn’t. “Where did you put my gardening shears?”

He flipped a wrist in Rose’s direction. “Eh, back on the ground over there. I’ll see you at Garnet’s thing?”

”I’ll be there,” she said.

”Not a ‘yes’, though. Very smooth. I see how you swept Rose off her feet.”

She could say the same to him, but Pearl refused. “Good bye, Greg.”

”Bye, Pearl!” Steven shouted from the doorway. Lion’s tail escaped between his turnups. “Love you! See you soon!”

”I love you too, Steven,” said Pearl. Her eyes watered. How misty she could be at goodbyes! She waved to her son with one hand. “See you soon!”


End file.
